Search Ends for Missing Oil Rig Workers

LESLIE KAUFMAN

Saturday

Apr 24, 2010 at 4:17 AM

The Coast Guard said that its search of 5,300 miles had reached a point where reasonable expectations of survival had passed.

NEW ORLEANS — Three days after an explosion on an oil rig off the southeast coast of Louisiana, an environmental disaster has been at least temporarily forestalled, but the search for 11 missing workers has ended, the Coast Guard said Friday evening.

Explosions on Tuesday night and Thursday sank the giant rig that had been atop a well reaching thousands of feet underwater. The first blast left 11 workers unaccounted for and a sheen of oil spread across marine-rich waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now it appears clear that those workers will not be found alive.

“We have just made a very difficult decision,” Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, commander of the Eighth Coast Guard District, said at a news conference. “After a three-day search covering 5,300 miles, we have reached a point where reasonable expectations of survival have passed.”

Admiral Landry also said the condition of four workers critically injured in the explosion had improved. Two had been released from the hospital, she said, and another was to be released soon. The fourth worker will remain in the hospital for 7 to 10 days. Officials have not released the names of any workers on the rig at the time of the explosion.

Earlier in the day, the Coast Guard conveyed optimism about the situation in the gulf, however. Remote-controlled underwater surveillance units indicated that there was no crude pouring out of the well beneath the ocean’s surface. The possibility of such leaks and their potentially devastating impact on local fisheries had been a major concern since the first explosion, only 50 miles from the Louisiana coast.

Admiral Landry said the heavy piece of emergency equipment at the well head known as a blowout preventer appeared to have done its job and was sealing off a flow of oil from below. “It is not a guarantee,” she said, “but right now we continue to see no oil emanating from the well.”

Nevertheless, the Coast Guard and the teams it is working with from BP, the company leasing the rig, and Transocean, the Swiss company that owned the rig, said they remained on high alert. “No, we are absolutely not saying this is over,” said Lt. Sue Kerver, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard. “We remain cautiously optimistic, but we need to remain prepared for the worst-case scenario.”

There were still too many uncertainties surrounding the accident, Lieutenant Kerver said. It is still not known, for example, what caused the explosion in the first place. It is also not known whether the blowout preventer can continue to hold. Additional measures, like cementing over the valve, are being considered.

Another mystery that the Coast Guard said remained unsolved was the whereabouts of some 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel that had been stored inside the pontoons of the rig before the accident. Fuel may have been released in the blast that sank the rig Thursday and was consumed in the fire, but it is also possible that it remains intact beneath the surface and could spill out.

Still, with the catastrophe beneath the waves contained for now, government and oil industry forces were able to concentrate their efforts on cleaning up the estimated 180,000 barrels of oil and water mix that resulted from the explosion. At midafternoon, officials described a slick that spread roughly 16 square miles in the Gulf and was sheen-thin in most areas but contained some deeper pockets of crude.

Despite the ugliness of darkened waters, the ecological danger the slick posed to the mainland seemed to recede Friday. While the spill was serious, it remained 45 miles offshore, slowly edging northeast. Projections indicated that even in five days it would still be 40 miles offshore.

“We have no trajectory showing it reaching the shoreline at all,” Admiral Landry said.

Marine biologists and other experts said it would be a long time before they would know how much damage the spill did to the local ecosystems, but they said it would be far worse if it hits shore.

Still, there were possible consequences to seabirds and fish. Some fish eggs end up on the top layer of water, which is affected by the sheen.

“Offshore it is much more subtle than onshore,” said Doug Helton, a fisheries biologist who coordinates oil spill responses for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “but it still is very serious.”

Chris Reddy, director of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said there were other factors to consider, like the thickness of the sheen and how long it lasted on the surface before sun and wave action broke it up.

Also, different creatures have different tolerances for oil. “If you get any oil on a bird at all they don’t do well,” he said.

Still, he said, he was impressed by the oil spill response so far. “I feel we are in pretty good hands.”

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